Sorry about the profanity, folks but this movie is "whack, yo!" That means it is not good.
Now that I got that out of my system let us talk some DOOM. Why do these video game movies miss the point on what we gamers want to see? In the case of DOOM the movie deliberately goes out of its way to completely insult the audience by changing the whole concept of the game. DOOM the movie has almost nothing to do with DOOM the game. They both take place on Mars and they both have marines but that is it.
Most of the time I have a hard time deciding where to begin when it comes to the sucktasticness of a movie. With Doom it's no problem. There is no gateway to Hell and there are no demons or demon possessed marines walking around accidentally shooting each other and getting into fights. Think about it. They had the coolest most simple concept for a game that could easily be transferred to film no problem and they poop it up. Instead of a gateway to Hell being opened up and hundreds of demons come spawning out to eat peoples' faces we get people turn into monsters because of some extra gene or chromosome or whatever that also can turn certain people into super warriors. By certain people, of course, I mean Carl Urban. Does that even for a second sound interesting to you? What movie would you be more interested in? The one about the gateway to Hell or the one about gene science mumbo-jumbo? A doorway to Hell opening up in an outpost on Mars millions of miles from Earth sets the imagination to work. You wonder what kind of demons you are going to see. Gene science mumbo-jumbo is uninspired, predictable and overly used in science fiction horror. How many genetic science run amok movies are out there? The answer is 3....Oh, no wait. I just discovered that the SyFy channel exists. The new answer is now 11,258,259,003.
Story wise there really isn't much to say. These marines come to Mars to investigate these missing scientists. Instead of doing that however they just roam around in poorly lit corridors getting bumped off one by one in traditional ALIEN fashion. I guess I could say something about Carl Urban being the nice guy marine who is trying to find his sister who is one of the archaeologists on the planet but, nah. Too boring. The marines look like actors on a real bad SyFy show too. None of them look like real military soldiers. Didn't one of them have a wrestling match with a monster in a pit somewhere? I don't remember that happening in DOOM the game.
Impressive deaths. That's a simple one, right? Apparently not. The deaths in DOOM are weak sauce. They just kind of happens with no visual impact. They are kind of forgettable. At least I don't remember them very much. Most of the time you aren't even sure what just happened. When you see some guy get murdered up super hardcore in PREDATOR you say something like "Man, that looks like that would suck." When you see someone die in DOOM you say "What just happened? The movie is too dark. I can't see what is going on. Oh, no! My eyes! I've gone blind! PLEASE SOMEONE. HELP ME! SOMEBODY IN THE AUDIENCE PLEASE HELP ME. I'VE GONE BLIND! THE MOVIE IS DEFENDING ITSELF SOMEHOW!" Then you touch the back of people's heads in the row in front of you as you feel your way to the aisle. Be sure you fall and roll your way down the aisle too before you leave. That's a great and dramatic way to piss people off in the movie theater. What was I writing about again?
B.F.G. The three most important letters in a DOOM game. If you find the B.F.G. in DOOM you know some demons are about to eat it. B.F.G. stands for BIG FROLICKING GUN. It shoots little bunny rabbits out of it's barrel and they run around and frolic in a nearby meadow. Nah, I am just messin with ya. It really means BIG F&@KING GUN. It kills everything on the screen. Use it and use it often. In DOOM the movie however apparently the writers think B.F.G. stands for SOMETHING YOU SHOOT WALLS WITH. I say that because all they shoot with it are walls. Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson makes a big deal about finding it and you think that he is going to shoot the crapola out of some monsters but he doesn't. He shoots some walls and that is it. No monsters die by the B.F.G. in DOOM the movie. What did the film makers think we wanted to see? Did they actually think we didn't want to see monsters get their heads all explody-like by the B.F.G.? It's called bad writing and it tends to happen a lot in American action movies. Remember in Jet Li's THE ONE where Jason Statham shows off his super-cool-mondo-badass gun that he somehow magically brought with him from his dimension even though we never saw him have it before. The movie made such a big deal about that gun and the first thing that happened was that he lost it from a big explosion. He didn't even get to fire it once.
I think it's cute when the movie tries to be clever by having the big "star" Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson die near the end. Did anyone not see that coming? Maybe the wrestling fans. They had a hard time keeping up with what was going on in THE MARINE. True story. Johnson says "I am not suppose to die" like the film has suddenly become self aware SCREAM style and we are left with Carl Urban. But don't worry though because Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson appears at the end and fights Carl Urban in this way out of place wire-fu matrix wrestling match. Remember that in the game? That's way better than a total-badass-scary-as-hell twelve foot tall demon goat god with a rocket launcher for an arm. No, please don't show that! I like Carl Urban. I think he was a great lead in the DOOM movie. Too bad the whole movie sucked around him.
I guess I have no idea what is going on in this movie. There are all these people that haven't been turned into monsters yet. Why did they only send some marines in? Why didn't they send transport ships in as well to evacuated the people? I am sure it is possible some how. Didn't they use some kind of warp to get the marines to Mars quickly? Instead the people are put into a giant room where they turn into monsters for the finale. What a terrible excuse to have a large amount of monsters in the movie. A gateway to Hell is a better way to explain why there are so many monsters. You never know how many there are. That would add to the horror of being alone on this planet millions of miles away from the nearest help. In DOOM the movie, however, there can only be a set amount of monsters because they are the population of the people.
My favorite dumbest thing about this movie though is the fossil people that the archaeologists find. Apparently they find a mother holding her child with her arm stretched out to fend off something that is attacking them. Obviously this is inspired by all those people who died by a volcano in Pompeii and everyone is buried in lava so fast that they are statues positioned in what they were doing in the moment they died. These fossils are suppose to foreshadow the monsters. What was she trying to fend off? That is what you are suppose to be asking yourself. Not me though. I was asking how do you fossilize yourself in a moving motion as you are being attacked by a monster? It doesn't make any sense. The idea is that they were killed by a monster and that is how they fossilized. So instead of the monster killing and eating them it kills them and uses rig amortise to position their bodies to show what they were doing when they were killed. Yea, that makes sense.
I know this isn't a very good review but then again this isn't a very good movie. Maybe this isn't the worst video game movie ever made but there is no way it should be this bad. Its a simple idea that should have been a great B-movie. Not some boring sloppy waste of my time snore-fest. What a poop-trocity. Now if you will excuse me I am going to sing the "doom song" now. Doom-doom-doom, Doomy-doom-doom, DOOM-doom-doom-doom, doom doom...................
Jason
I bought this in a Rock 3 pack, thank God the other two movies were decent.
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